Call it a cultural confluence, call it a comeback. Now 54 and the closest the gay rights movement has to a living legend, the former protege to a political martyr and creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is busily planning his next act – a march on the nation’s capital that he hopes will usher in the final era in his community’s struggle for acceptance.

“There was a time when I thought I would never be happy again,” Jones says, standing barefoot in the tiki-torched yard of the California desert bungalow where he has lived since 1999 but is rarely home long enough to enjoy. “I feel so connected to the movement again.”

That he feels compelled to comment on his good fortune says a lot about the twists Jones’ own life took after 1978, the year openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated.

Culture watchers will remember that Jones, the 23-year-old City Hall intern portrayed in “Milk,” went on to create the 47,000-panel quilt that humanized the lives lost to AIDS. Less widely known is that during the decade he spent weaving one of the world’s largest folk art projects into the nation’s fabric, Jones was preparing to die himself.

Instead, he became one of the AIDS epidemic’s earliest survivors.

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have saved money and joined a gym,” laughs Jones, who shows the puckish sense of humor actor Emile Hirsch exhibited as his on-screen alter-ego.

When talk turns to the National Equality March scheduled for the second week of October in Washington, however, Jones turns serious.

His goal is to build an army of activists drawn from each of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. Afterward, participants will be sent home to pressure their representatives and the White House into removing the remaining barriers to gay equality, such as the policy that prevents gays from serving openly in the military.

If successful, Jones’ vision would represent a sea change in the gay rights movement’s strategy of securing victories piecemeal on the local or state level.

“We got locked into this pattern of fighting for fractions of crumbs – ‘Oh please, sir, in this county could we please not be fired for being gay if it’s all right in this county for you to evict us for being gay?’” he says. “It’s been this ping-pong with our basic civil rights….If you are a free and equal people, why would you settle for this?”

Jones agreed to organize the march at the urging of veteran activist David Mixner, who proposed it as a way to lobby President Barack Obama to follow through on his campaign promises.

“When he has a sense of righteousness about a mission, he has a tenacity I have rarely seen,” said Mixner, who has known Jones since the 1970s. “He is not a person who has ever put himself before the mission.”

Many gay leaders quickly dismissed the march idea as a waste of time and money. Jones took to the Internet and the gay political circuit to address the nay-sayers.

During more than 35 years of activism, friends and associates say that Jones has weathered criticism before.

In 1986, when he was trying to amass support for a giant quilt stitched by people who lost loved ones to AIDS, even fellow activists refused to get on board, according to Jones. Many saw the project as a morbid endeavor that would distract them from the serious work of persuading the government to invest in AIDS research.

Jones persisted. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is now recognized as not only a powerful symbol of loss, but a turning point in the public’s perception of the disease.

“I thought who is going to grieve the most when I die? It’s going to be my family – my parents, my little sister and my grandmothers. I wanted a place in this movement for my grandmothers,” he says.

With his health waning, Jones in 1990 relinquished control of the quilt to a nonprofit foundation that eventually moved the 54-ton quilt to Atlanta. He continued to serve as its public face until five years ago, when tensions between him and the foundation’s new leadership bubbled over with his firing and an unsuccessful wrongful termination suit.

In recent years, Jones has worked as a gay community liason for the national hotel workers union, an outgrowth of his activism.

He credits Milk, the middle-aged camera store owner turned politician, with transforming him from a shy and somewhat aimless young hippie into a committed activist unafraid to use his voice or to be open about his sexuality.

“Harvey was never a shadow to me. He was an inspiration, a light. His biggest gift to me was to not fear straight people,” he said.

Jones’ determination not to let Milk’s legacy fade was key in getting the movie made, said screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for his work on the film. Jones served as the movie’s historical adviser.

“Cleve never lost his belief in the power of the grass roots,” Black says. “I remember when I first met him, over those first few years of research and even when shooting ‘Milk’ he would say, ‘What is your generation doing? I can’t imagine how empty it must be not to have a really strong generational purpose.’”

In Jones, Black sees an heir to Milk’s role as an inspirational leader. “Milk” opened last November just before the 30th anniversary of Milk’s assassination and just after California voters passed a ballot measure rescinding the right to wed the state Supreme Court had granted gays five months earlier.

For weeks, young activists protested in major cities across the country.

“I saw this man’s eyes light up in a way I had never seen,” Black says of Jones. “I saw him come to life when the young people started to rise up. I think he recognized in them a purpose he hadn’t seen since his own days with Harvey Milk.”

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said 11 men and 15 women each face a charge of unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct and loud and boisterous behavior. Their names and ages were not immediately released.

Schneider said the group entered the rotunda, located beneath the Capitol dome, and linked themselves together with a white chain at about 10 a.m. The area is usually crowded with tourists, but police restricted the traffic while they made arrests.

The activists carried signs in support of funding for needle exchange, HIV/AIDS housing and programs aimed at fighting AIDS. They chanted, “Fight global AIDS now,” and, “Clean needles save lives.” They marched in a circle before lying down on the floor.

Police bound the activists hands together and dragged some of the demonstrators to their feet as they arrested them.

The arrests came one day before President Barack Obama is to arrive in Ghana, where 320,000 people are HIV positive, according to the United Nations’ AIDS fighting agency, UNAIDS.

The activists were part of a coalition of five AIDS groups from Washington, Philadelphia and New York. They included ACT UP Philadelphia, DC Fights Back, Health GAP, New York City AIDS Network and Housing Works.

Omolola Adele-Oso of DC Fights Back questioned why lawmakers were bailing out financial institutions instead of devoting more dollars to AIDS programs.

“HIV is not in a recession,” Adele-Oso said in a written statement from the coalition about the demonstration.

The Creating Change conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is the nation’s largest annual convening of LGBT rights activists. It came amidst a national sense of letdown and finger pointing over the passage of Proposition 8 in California which overturned a state Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage. In addition to the ban in California, voters also passed anti-gay marriage amendments in Florida and Arizona and approved a ban on gay adoption in Arkansas.

The conference looked at ways of reversing constitutional bans on gay marriage and promoting LGBT rights at the state level.  It also included sessions geared toward effecting change at the federal level, including passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, and inclusive ENDA and repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“It has been a bittersweet year, but the state of our movement is engaged,” said NGLTF Executive Director Rea Carey in her “State of the Movement” address.

“You know, there are years when our movement for full equality jumps by leaps and bounds and other years when we toil to gain every inch of ground. This year has been a bit of both in which we made progress on the local and state level and our country elected its first person of color to the presidency! Yet our love for each other was attacked again by the majority at the ballot box; our right to marry was taken away in California; our transgender brothers and sisters were denied much needed protections; and federal policy continued to elude us under the evil empire… I mean the Bush administration.”

Among those who spoke at the conference was U.S. Rep Jared Polis (D). The openly gay member of Congress from Colorado said that the country is on the “threshold of making tremendous progress.”

“Americans are a good people who want to be fair. It’s up to your work every day in your communities to show people the way,” he told the convention.

Among the speakers were Dolores Huerta, the Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union; Dr. Marjorie J. Hill, the Chief Executive Officer of Gay Men’s Health Crisis; and Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

But there also was time for some levity with participation from comic Kate Clinton and drag performers The Kinsey Sicks.

More than a dozen LGBT young adults and their allies are visiting 15 Christian schools throughout the South to engage students in a discussion on gay inclusion.

The six “riders” ignored warnings they would be arrested if they did not leave the campus.  They offered no resistance as police led them away.

This is the third year for the Equality Ride. Unlike previous years, “riders” were not obstructed as they spoke with students at Liberty University and Columbia International.

Initially, Palm Beach Atlantic officials completely refused to allow Equality Riders on campus. The school then suggested a limited meeting.

President David W. Clark’s office told the group that “riders” would be escorted onto campus for a two hour meeting with a pre-selected group of students and staff in an undisclosed location.

It was rejected by Equality Ride.

“Unfortunately, this format is not conducive to reaching out to the Palm Beach Atlantic community in the spirit of open dialogue. Additionally, the LGBT students who need to hear the Ride’s message of love and affirmation would not be reached in this format,” the group said in a statement.

More than 200 U.S. colleges and universities have explicit policies that discriminate against LGBT students.

At Palm Beach Atlantic the student handbook forbids, “sexual activity that is inconsistent with biblical teaching, such as: … homosexual behavior.”

Violators can be punished at the discretion of the university administration.

“[This leads] to a climate of fear and uncertainty for gay and transgender students,” Equality Ride said.

In a statement the university said it “does not ban enrollment of students with same sex orientation. Although Palm Beach Atlantic welcomes students from various backgrounds, the University does require that all students adhere to the behavioral standards outlined in the student handbook, which prohibits activities that are inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible.”

As the six protesters were being removed from the campus by police and charged with trespassing, other members of the group held hands and prayed.

Since 2006, the Equality Ride has visited 50 schools, hosting public forums, participating in panel discussions, and taking part in worship services and Bible studies. The goal is to inspire further conversation and to empower students, faculty, and administrators to make their school welcoming to all students.

But the bus tour often has been met with opposition from schools and resulted in the arrests of some Soulforce members.

Two members of the group were arrested last year at the headquarters of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs.

About 20 demonstrators held a vigil outside the headquarters, quoting from some of the FOF statements that homosexuality is “choice” and can be “cured,” that homosexuality is harmful, that gays live shorter lives, and that same-sex relationships threaten opposite-sex marriage.

Following the vigil, two protesters entered the headquarters building. Chris Hubble and Leigh Lyon, armed with two dozen yellow roses for Dobson and copies of the Soulforce booklet “A False Focus on My Family” and a DVD letter titled “Dear Dr. Dobson,” asked to see the conservative Christian leader.

When they refused to leave they were arrested.

Ten other riders were arrested on trespassing charges after they entered the Bethany Lutheran College campus in Mankato, Minn.

In 2006, 24 Soulforce demonstrators were arrested at a gay “die-in” at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Three others were arrested at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, other were arrested at Covenant College in Georgia, University of Cumberlands and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky,

Soulforce members also were arrested at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, West Point, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia which is affiliated with Christian Broadcaster Pat Robertson.

The organizers of the Equality Ride said they use a collaborative approach, writing to college administrators months in advance and inviting them to work together to design programming that examines diverse points of view–including points of view that affirm gay and transgender students.